


be my mistake

by orphan_account



Series: love it if we made it [1]
Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: F/F, Mutual Pining, Sort of some jealousy, There is a good amount of so'hara in this but it's not endgame, Two Dumb Idiots, they're both really soft for each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-23 06:20:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23173720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: three times emily slept with someone else to stop thinking about lindsey + the one time she got it right
Relationships: Kelley O'Hara/Emily Sonnett, Lindsey Horan/Emily Sonnett
Series: love it if we made it [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1695145
Comments: 22
Kudos: 279





	1. just wait 'til I give you a sign

**Author's Note:**

> title from the song by the 1975
> 
> "you do make me hard  
> but she makes me weak"

1.

The first time she does it, it’s stupid.

It’s stupid and it sucks and she hates herself for it.

Emily doesn’t sleep around. None of them use apps — at least not the national teamers, mainly because over half of them are already coupled up and the remaining singles are all just this side of famous, where it would feel slightly mortifying to be found by a fan on a dating app.

(Rose made a profile for Wilma once, but that doesn’t count.)

But Emily is also competitive, to an annoying, problematic level. All of them are, obviously, but most of her friends are able to temper it at least a bit off the pitch. That’s not entirely true — Tobin and Christen once didn’t talk to each other for a solid day over either a board game or a card game, no one was ever able to ascertain which one — but Emily is definitely the most predictable, obnoxiously competitive of all of them.

Which is probably why she bites.

“If any of us needs help with flirting, it’s Sonnett.” Ellie says it matter-of-factly, taking a swig of her beer and pointing decisively at Emily. “This kid has no game.”

Emily flushes with the challenge.

Lindsey is looking at her and Emily is looking back and neither of them are saying anything because they haven’t talked about France. Not yet. It’s been half a goddamn year and they haven’t talked about it yet.

They haven’t talked about the fact that at some point Emily started sleeping in Lindsey’s bed every night, and at some point Lindsey stopped even bothering to tease her about it, started texting to ask where she was if she got stuck in her room or with Mal on her way to bed, and at some point Emily just packed her toothbrush in Lindsey’s bag because it was easier than carrying it over every night.

They haven’t talked about the way no one else mentioned this — not a joke, not a single teasing comment. They haven’t talked about the way Lindsey held Emily’s hand on the bus ride home from every game, interlacing their fingers with a quiet smile.

They haven’t talked about the fact that after the World Cup — after Lindsey held her in a crushing hug for several beats too long on the field, after Emily poured champagne into her mouth and didn’t even pretend she wasn’t watching the way it dripped down her throat — Lindsey dragged her into a corner of the afterparty and kissed her until she couldn’t breathe. 

They haven’t talked about the fact that Emily kissed her back, that they got tangled up in each other and only pulled apart once, staring at each other and smiling wide and goofy and then immediately leaning in again at the same time. They haven’t talked about the fact that the only thing that stopped that kiss was Tobin hopping over, throwing both arms around them and acting like it wasn’t strange at all to see two of her teammates kissing in the corner.

They flew home and they adjusted to Portland and they went back to club play and they didn’t talk about it and it’s driving Emily absolutely insane.

She’s angry a lot lately. About her general lack of playing time for the national team, the fact that she’s on bubble watch for the Olympics already, the fact that she got injured before she could really do anything about the end of the season in Portland. Mostly, though, she’s angry about the way Lindsey has treated her since they’ve gotten home — as if she’s fragile. It’s a low, simmering resentment and some of it spills over in this stupid little bar all because of one stupid little comment.

“You got that right.” Lindsey’s just joining in the chorus as the rest of their friends join in some good-natured teasing, and honestly, it doesn’t mean anything. She says it a little softer than normal, her eyes flitting to the table as she sips at her drink, but it cuts through the rest of the noise. It’s all Emily hears, and it sends a heat burning straight through her gut.

“I have game.” Emily straightens up, rolling her shoulders back, and she looks straight at Lindsey as she says it. Lindsey, who’s avoiding her gaze completely. “Do you really need me to prove it to you?”

“We’re literally at a beer bar in the arts district.” The smile curling across Caitlin’s features is a touch maniacal. “You can't move three feet without hitting a lesbian. I would absolutely love for you to prove it.”

“Alright.” She shoves herself unsteadily to her feet before she can really think through _how_ she’s going to prove this. “Watch and learn, idiots.”

She goes to the bar, because that seems like a good first step. The truth is that Emily really doesn’t have an ounce of game in her body. She doesn’t date all that much, and when she does, it’s long-term. Not a hookup, not a random pickup at a bar. But she’s also a World Cup champion, and honestly if that doesn’t translate into somehow getting a girl’s number, then she doesn’t know what else will.

Emily scopes the bar, eases in next to a girl who’s on her own and orders a double IPA because she’s going to need more alcohol if this is going to happen. She waits until the bartender hands it to her, until she’s taken several swallows, before turning to the girl with what she hopes is a charming smile.

“Hey.”

“Hi.” The girl turns a little too fast, and Emily has to hold herself still to keep from panicking. “I’m sorry, it’s just- you play for the Thorns, right?”

This is worse than a fan finding her on a dating app. So much worse. Emily flushes, feels the heat of the embarrassment spread all the way up her neck. This is the opposite of smooth.

“Uh, yeah, I do.” The girl is beaming at her. She’s pretty in a really straightforward way, straight black hair and bright eyes. More tattoos than Emily’s taste, but that doesn’t really matter. “I play defense.”

Emily chances a glance back towards her friends, and it’s a physical challenge to keep from rolling her eyes at Caitlin and Ellie. They’re both leaned forward fully, elbows planted on the their table, chins rested on their fists as if they're waiting on a buzzer beater shot. Emily almost flips them off, almost makes a face, but then her eyes settle on Lindsey and it sends a slight thrill up her spine.

Lindsey has slumped back into her chair, holding her beer below her chin as if she had started to take a drink and then forgot about it halfway. Their eyes meet, and something about Lindsey's expression narrows. It's burning, even halfway across this bar. She looks _hungry_ , and it flips Emily's stomach over a little, goads on that competitive edge.

She turns back to the girl next to her, places her hand on her forearm, smirks slightly at the flush the action earns.

"Can I buy you a drink?"

They get through two more rounds in record time, and for some reason Emily is suddenly reminded of one of Kelley's old preachings on beer.

"You can't get drunk from beer." Kelley had said that while downing a PBR at a day party in Atlanta several years ago, and Emily had laughed hard enough that her own beer had come out through her nose. "I mean it. Tipsy? Yes. Drunk? No."

That was, obviously, before they both started drinking craft beer seriously, because this girl had suggested a barrel aged stout for their second round and right now it's hitting both of them — but mainly Emily, who hasn't really had anything to drink outside a Christmas glass of wine since the World Cup — particularly hard.

“I’ve always wanted to kiss an Olympian—“ 

It comes tumbling off the girl’s lips and Emily doesn’t even correct her, doesn’t pause to take in the sting that _still_ comes from that memory, doesn’t tell her that if she wants to kiss an Olympian she should go over to the table in the corner, that she can personally vouch for the kissing abilities of one of them, that she—

“Then why don’t you?” It’s probably the smoothest thing Emily’s said all night — it might be the smoothest thing she’s said _ever_ — and she’s more surprised by her own words than by the feeling of the girl’s lips pressed up against hers. Almost in a haze, she reaches up to place her hand on her jaw, uses her thumb to tip her head back slightly and deepen the kiss immediately.

She’s showing off. Emily knows that, but at this point she needs this, because she might not have game but she knows for a fact that she’s a decent kisser. So she kisses this random girl at this random bar as deeply as she can, until they’re pulling back because they’ve both run out of breath. Emily flashes a smile at this girl — this sweet, poor girl who looks absolutely _enamored_ — and there’s a pang in her chest when she remembers exactly why she doesn’t sleep around.

Then she looks over at her friends, and Ellie is standing up with both fists triumphantly in the air and Caitlin is slumped back in her seat with her hand pressed dramatically to her chest and Lindsey—

Lindsey’s jaw is clenched, her fists are clenched, her whole body seems wired with quivering, barely controlled emotion. It only eggs Emily on. It stokes that fire, the self-righteous stubbornness, because Lindsey doesn’t get to look at her like that. She doesn’t get to kiss her like that, and then never talk about it again, and then sit here and act as if Emily is _hers_ , as if she’s the one getting hurt.

“Do you wanna get out of here—“

“My place is just around—“

They both speak at the same time, and it’s so easy to laugh at that, so easy to flag down the bartender and close them both out, so easy to grab her wrist and tug her lightly towards the door of the bar. All of it’s easy — kissing her in the alley, kissing her in the Uber, kissing her in bed — until it’s not. 

It’s nothing about this sweet, gentle girl, whose name Emily has already forgotten and isn’t going to remember. But suddenly, as she’s dropping her mouth to her throat, she can’t help but wonder how Lindsey would taste here. She wonders it again when she gets her jeans around her ankles, when she presses her hips into the bed. It fills her mind, drowns out every noise the girl is making, dulls her movements until she can’t help but feel half-hearted.

The girl offers to return the favor and Emily shrinks away, tries to cover it up with a smile and a shake of her head, then ducks out with the excuse of grabbing them water. When she comes back, she’s already pulling her clothes back on, tucking her phone into her back pocket.

“You should stay,” Emily says weakly, and it earns her another sweet smile.

“It’s okay.” She touches Emily’s arm. “I have work early anyways.”

Emily doesn’t ask for her number, but the girl doesn’t offer either. 

At training two mornings later, the whole team seems to have heard, teasing Emily intensely at every possible moment. Lindsey’s scowls grow less furrowed, more shallow with each repetition. Only Tobin gives Emily a break, hanging close by Lindsey's side for most of the session. 

“I still can’t believe it,” Caitlin says, rubbing Emily’s shoulder as they walk to the showers. “How was it, though? You gotta give us more detail.”

Emily shrugs. She looks up and Lindsey is watching her, eyes guarded.

“Nothing special.” Emily holds her gaze, harder and longer than she feels like she’s looked at her best friend in months. “I’ve kissed better.”

Lindsey drops her chin, and Emily knows she’s not imagining the small smile curling the corner of her lips.

2.

She finds out about the trade at camp.

At _camp_ , the simultaneous best and worst place to receive bad news. The best because everyone is there, and Ali hates hugs but there’s something about her hand, solid and firm and heavy with compassion as it rests in the space just below the nape of Emily’s neck, Ashlyn crouched nearby making a fool of herself while describing every single avocado toast she’s ever eaten in Orlando, Megan leaned back explaining how she visits down there as often as possible, how she wishes the WNBA would expand into the market so Sue could drag her along for road games twice a season.

It’s the worst because _everyone_ is there, and Emily doesn’t mind being around people on the days she feels bright and sunny, but on a day like this, all she wants to do is crumple in on herself, alone and away from anyone else’s eyes.

That’s why Rose and Sam react the way they do — eyes widening simultaneously, a short chorus of “shit” and “what the actual fuck” followed by minimal physical contact.

“Hey.” Rose grabs her chin for a moment, forces their eyes to meet. “We’re here. You know our room number. Any time—“

“Any place,” Emily finishes, their weird little catchphrase for whenever life is tough getting a little choked in the back of her throat. “Got it.”

And then her best friends let her be, knowing her need for space is tantamount to anything else at this moment.

“Go find Lindsey,” Rose mutters to Mal as they leave, and Emily squeezes her eyes shut to pretend she didn’t hear. 

When Ali and Ashlyn and Megan knock minutes later, Emily’s not sure why she lets them in.

Regardless, she lets herself sink into Ali’s touch and Ashlyn’s words for a few more minutes, long enough so they won’t think she’s mad at them or at Mark or at any part of this. Then she’s on her feet, accepting a hug from Ashlyn and a squeeze to the shoulder from Ali, sucking in deep, shuddering breaths to keep the tears held firmly back.

She’s not going to cry in public. She makes it to the elevator before she loses her grip, the first tear tumbling a salty track down her face and across her lips as the doors slide shut.

Emily ends up at Kelley’s door.

Alyssa opens it, and her face falls into an almost comically earnest expression as she reaches out for Emily.

“Dude.” 

It’s a well-kept secret among the national team that Alyssa actually gives the best hugs. Like, ever. For a moment, with her face burrowed into her keeper’s neck and those long arms pressing her in just the right side of too hard, Emily thinks this might be enough, this might be all she needs to get over the stupidity of all this. But then she lets go, shifting towards the door, and Emily catches sight of Kelley over her shoulder.

“I’m stepping out,” Alyssa says, her hand squeezing lightly at the back of Emily’s neck. “You text me if you need anything while I’m out?”

“Yeah.” Emily pats Alyssa’s arm awkwardly, offering a smile, and then she lets the door fall shut and the room is quiet. Emily turns, offers a meek smile to Kelley, who shakes her head and crosses the room too quickly.

“Don’t do that.” Kelley’s hands are cold and a little clammy as they clamp firmly on Emily’s cheeks for a second, and then Kelley is dragging her in quickly. “Don’t fake it. This sucks.”

“This sucks so fucking much.” Emily meant to say it quietly, but Kelley pulls her emphatically into her shoulder and somehow the words come out as a half-wail. She would be embarrassed but this is Kelley, whose love has always been unconditional and unwavering, so she just presses her nose into her T-shirt.

Finally, Emily sniffles particularly wetly and they both laugh, almost as a reflex.

“Gross.” Kelley pushes her away gently, glancing down at her shoulder where a visible patch of snot has darkened the soft cotton. “Oh my god, you’re disgusting.”

“Not sorry,” Emily mutters, using both hands to wipe down her face and her nose and her jaw and her neck, drying her hands on her shorts haphazardly.

“Have you told Lindsey?” That comes out like a reflex too, and Emily stamps down the flicker of anger in her stomach, lowers her shoulder as she half-shoves past Kelley and moves further into the room. “I mean you should probably—“

“Come here,” Emily says. She tries her absolute best to make her voice hard, firm, but it cracks on the second syllable.

“O-kay.” Kelley quirks an eyebrow, drawing out the word as she steps back into Emily’s space. “I take it we’re not talking about her?”

“Not yet- I just feel like I- I need—“ Emily is searching Kelley’s face, her chest beginning to heave with what feels like the first breaths of a panic attack.

“Hey.” Kelley presses her palm flat to Emily’s collarbone, her thumb digging in slightly. It works, and Emily squeezes her eyes shut, forcing herself to find grounding in the physical touch. “What do you need.”

It’s a statement, not a question, as if Kelley is acknowledging where this is going before either of them had to say anything. Emily’s eyes snap open, and she examines Kelley’s face carefully, tracking over each individual freckle to give her plenty of time to back away. Kelley stands still. Then, her chin drops slightly, the tiniest nod of encouragement.

Emily kisses Kelley.

(They’ve done this before. Twice, actually. 

The first happened when Emily didn’t make the Olympic roster, and Kelley’s warm support had turned easily into something a little bit more, soothing and gentle. The second was when Kelley hurt her ankle again and Emily came to visit — that time, Emily had asked how she could help and Kelley had wiggled her eyebrows suggestively and Emily had been on her knees with her fingers looped into the waistband of her shorts before she could backtrack and say she was joking.

It never meant anything, but it always helped them both feel a little more human.)

“What do you need?” Kelley’s already got her pressed into the bed, already got one thigh pressed up into her and her shirt hiked up. “I need you to talk to me—“

“You.” Emily gasps it out, arching her back and baring her throat, hoping the way she’s opening herself to Kelley will explain more than the words she’s gritting out. “Need you.”

Kelley nods and drops her head, presses kisses feather light behind Emily’s ear, trails her fingertips up her sides. It’s soft, sweet in such an absolutely _Kelley_ way and it makes Emily feel sick to her stomach. She can feel every ounce of tenderness in the way Kelley’s hands press into her rib cage, her mouth swirling across Emily’s neck, and it’s not what she wants, not what she needs. Not from Kelley.

“Stop fucking around—“ Emily grits out, tugging Kelley’s hair. 

It’s too hard. Way too hard. Kelley hisses slightly at it, and Emily wonders briefly if she’s going to pull away. Any other day, Emily is certain that would’ve ended things — Kelley would’ve cursed and pulled away, told her off, made them stop. Today, it has the opposite effect. Kelley sucks in a breath and stops fucking around.

The reason Kelley was the best person for this — besides the fact that she’s the only person Emily’s ever known who can sleep with the general majority of her friends without it ever affecting their friendships — is that her undivided attention has the same feeling as an absolute hurricane. Kelley sits back for a moment, tugs her shirt off over her head with one hand and then dives back in, and it’s all Emily can do to hold on for dear life.

“You still good with red, yellow, green?” Kelley pauses for the half-second necessary for Emily to nod her consent, and then she’s working Emily’s bra off like her life depends on it.

Sleeping with Kelley shuts her brain off, makes her focus on the nails digging into the back of her thighs, the tongue and teeth worrying at her inner thigh. Sometimes that focus slips, but Kelley somehow has a sixth sense for that, too, digging in with her teeth or her fingernails.

“Look at me,” Kelley says once, when Emily’s eyes are crushed shut again and her attention is clearly straying. 

So she forces her eyes open, and it works. It helps that Kelley is so good at this, that she can somehow get Emily to squirm under her in minutes. It helps, too, that Emily is craving a release, an escape, forces herself to chase every emotion that doesn’t feel as if it’s suffocating her from the inside out.

“You good?” Kelley asks afterwards. Her fingertips tease at the soft hairs at the nape of Emily’s neck, still damp with sweat, and she shivers.

“No.” This time she lets herself cry fully, lets it come from deep in her chest and belly, and Kelley scoops her in tightly and doesn’t let go.

In the end, it probably makes things worse.

At some point, had Kelley pressed her teeth into the curve of Emily’s neck, somehow scoping out the most sensitive patch of skin. She had pulled back instinctively, but Emily had tangled her fingers through her hair and pulled her back in, encouraging and demanding, and at some point Kelley had given in and let her mouth fixate for several minutes. The result was a mark, ugly and almost impossible to cover with concealer.

“Sorry,” Kelley had whispered, completely sincere as she dabbed makeup onto it. Emily just shrugged, already slipping into forlorn silence. “I’ll cover this right up, I promise.”

She did her best, but it’s not quite good enough. To their credit, no one on the team — not a trainer, not a teammate, not a coach — mentions it. In fact, everyone in red, white and blue in Tampa seems dead set on ignoring it entirely.

Everyone but Lindsey.

Emily successfully avoids her until dinner the next day, eating breakfast in her room and relishing in a split-squad training session that focuses each position group into a different area of the field. Lindsey had texted her twice, a simple “I love you” followed by a promise of unending support whenever Emily was ready to talk. It hurt, it hurt, it hurt so much that Emily refused to read past the third word, deleting the message.

She avoids her, and it works until they’re all forced to congregate in the hotel conference room to eat. She had showered after training, not bothering to do anything besides tug on an oversized hoodie — which she realizes a minute too late belongs to Lindsey — and head to dinner, slumping into the first seat possible and letting out a quiet breath of relief when AD sits next to her, squeezes her knee once and says nothing further.

Rose and Sam and Mal join them, and it almost feels normal until Lindsey plops down in the seat directly across from her with a heavy sigh.

“I swear to God if there isn’t bread of some kind at this meal, I’m rioting.” Lindsey says it and she immediately looks at Emily with a meek grin, searching her face for signs of life, and Emily doesn’t know what to do so she turns her head, hard, and quickly asks AD if she knows what’s for dinner.

That’s a mistake, too. Emily had forgotten about the mark already, hadn’t bothered to cover it up since everyone was insisting on treating her like some fragile family heirloom that could be cracked with the slightest word. So she turns, baring her neck and the not-even-slightly-faded bruise at the curve of her throat, and Lindsey drops her fork. 

Emily pretends to not see it. Lindsey pretends to be immediately absorbed in a conversation with Christen. It almost works.

“Dude.” Rose mutters it softly, tapping her ankle lightly with a sneaker under the table. “You’re going to break Lindsey.”

Guilt rolls over in her stomach, but Emily refuses to look up. She can feel the eyes on her from across the table, and she knows she should do something, move her hair or put her hood up or _something_ , but then that would acknowledge that she knows Lindsey can see the mark, that she knows seeing it _hurt_ Lindsey, and the implications of what that means — on top of the pure, horrible fact that soon it won't matter, that soon they'll live three timezones and two lives apart from one another — is too much to handle.

Finally, eventually, she’s forced to look up. She looks up and Lindsey is still looking and the pain in her eyes forces the nausea straight back into Emily’s stomach. She’s up, moving out of the room and into the bathroom before she has to look for a moment longer.

No one comes. Emily wonders who told everyone to leave her alone. Rose probably, or maybe Kelley. They leave her alone through the rest of the day, and she holds it together until she’s in bed, lights out and Julie’s breathing soft and solid across the room.

Then Emily lets herself cry for the third time that day. She feels as if she’s in mourning — for the city, the team, the friends, the fans she’s losing.

But somehow, more than anything else, that look in Lindsey’s eyes hurts the most.


	2. 'cause I get lonesome sometimes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The timeline on this isn't right at all (Caitlin should be in the W-League, I don't think anyone was actually in Portland during this time period) but please just go with it.

iii.

Emily sees the notification and her whole body goes into overdrive.

It’s been eight days. Eight extremely long, extremely exhausting days — partially because their new trainer set up grueling two-a-day sessions like she was trying to wipe the memory of Dawn completely out of their brains, but mainly because avoiding Lindsey is the most emotionally draining thing she’s ever done.

After a day of actually, physically avoiding her, Emily had to give it up, simply because they were living in the same hotel and training on the same fields for another week. The compromise, however, was somehow worse. They existed in the same rooms, hung out with their friends, and still Emily found a way to avoid her. Her eyes, her comments. Emily scrambled away from any form of alone time, any form of individual attention. And Lindsey noticed, of course she noticed, which is probably how they ended up in the lobby together on the second-to-last day of camp.

“Hey.” Lindsey barely looked up from her phone. “Just waiting on Rose and Sam.”

Emily nodded, shifted from one foot to another. It shouldn’t be awkward. Really, it shouldn’t. They’ve walked to get coffee after a mid-day nap at camp plenty of times before. Plenty of times in the past they’d be similarly quiet, tired in their bones and content to sink into a familiar silence with one another. It shouldn’t feel like Emily needs to fill that with something _more_.

Their phones vibrated at the same time. It’s a text from Rose — “Sammy and I are going back to sleep, can u bring us back caffeine?”

Slowly, Emily looked up at Lindsey, who was stuck looking at her phone with some mix of frustration and amusement.

“So we’re getting coffee on our own.” There was something else in her eyes when she looked up at Emily finally, something soft and pleading. “I guess we can manage that.”

It’s a joke, technically, but Emily felt the plaintive anxiety running just beneath her words. Lindsey wasn’t sure if they could survive that long on their own. Emily wasn’t either, but she ended up the first to give, leaning in to knock their shoulders together. Vaguely, she wondered when the last time was that they touched on purpose. 

“I guess we can.” Her smile was only half-full, but it seemed to be enough to steel Lindsey. The next 15 minutes were hesitant, almost painfully awkward, but they managed.

They didn’t talk about it. About the trade, about the kiss, about any of _this_. They got coffee and they walked at a slightly faster-than-normal pace back to the hotel and then they both made excuses to flee back up to their respective rooms. They left Tampa and they flew home together and sat separately on the plane and Emily did her absolute best to try to forget the way neither of them talked about it.

Which brings her to today. They still haven’t talked about it, and Emily thought time would help that but instead it’s just slowly gnawing at her, and it finally breaks fully through when she gets the notification that Lindsey tagged her in a post on Instagram.

Maybe it’s just a group shot from camp. That’s what it is, she reassures herself, slowly unlocking her phone, but then it’s open and it’s not, it’s a picture of them — her favorite picture of them, the one that was her lock screen for weeks. She forces herself to glance down at the caption, and she gets four words in —“ _Dasani. Firstly, I never thought_ ” — and then she’s tossing the phone onto the couch cushion without even bothering to lock it.

She sits stock still for several minutes, lets everything rush through her, and she’s surprised when she realizes the strongest, foremost emotion filling her to her fingertips is anger.

Emily doesn’t really get angry like this. Her temper flares in flashes. She doesn’t seethe. She doesn’t obsess. But for months now, everything has been simmering, low and horrible and inevitable. Her whole life feels like it’s spinning out of control and she’s tired of not being able to make a single damn decision for herself. She’s tired of living in some limbo where Lindsey lives next-door to her and won’t come over and _tell_ her these things, that she’s comfortable instead just putting them out in public for the rest of the world to see. She’s sick of not telling Lindsey that she’s going to miss her more than any other damn thing in Portland.

She picks up her phone and calls Caitlin, because getting drunk with her most reliably enabling friend is one thing she can definitely control.

“I need to drink.” Emily says it before Caitlin even gets done with her typical greeting, and she can practical see her friend perking up on the opposite end of the line. “You down?”

“Oh my pal, my friend, my good companion—“ She can hear Caitlin doing something, probably scrambling to her feet to start changing immediately. “Always. Linds coming too?”

“Nah, I already checked and she’s being a loser, says she needs her beauty sleep.” Emily says it and she’s amazed by how easily the lie slips off her tongue. Caitlin buys it immediately though, a slightly derisive snort coming through the other line almost immediately.

“Yeah, she sure needs that,” Caitlin says with a laugh, but there’s no weight to it. “Okay, meet me at that wine bar in the south district in an hour? I can’t do beer, I’m trying to watch carbs while I’m doing this new recovery plan.”

“Right, yeah.” Emily’s distracted. She’s been distracted for months and even now, she can’t get herself to lock in on her best friend’s voice, to put even half of her focus on one of the last normal nights she’s going to get with Caitlin in Portland. “See you there?”

“Race you there, more like it—“ Caitlin hangs up with half of her laugh still bubbling from the receiver, and Emily rolls her eyes.

It’s chilly in Portland, not quite _cold_ but enough that they both show up in leather and ripped denim. Caitlin makes an immediate joke about it, and Emily tries to banter back, but it all feels tinged with something a little too serious.

“Sonny, I know you’re broken up about leaving me, but you gotta lighten up,” Caitlin says gently, rubbing at her arm. “It’ll work out.”

“I know.” She doesn’t want to talk about it, so she drinks instead. 

It’s out of character — Emily hardly ever drinks with the intention of getting drunk, and she’s never been the type to use alcohol as a distraction or a numbing agent. But to be honest, she hasn’t felt like herself in awhile now. Definitely not since Tampa. Maybe longer.

So she tosses back the rest of the glass, which cost $17 and was actually a pretty well-bodied pinot and definitely should’ve been savored.

“Dive bar?” Emily poses it as a question, but she’s already waving the bartender down. “I passed by one just down the block.”

Caitlin quirks an eyebrow at her, but she acquiesces without any argument. It stings, another reminder of the kid gloves that everyone’s been treating her with for over a week now. She doesn’t even have to drag Caitlin down the street, and they duck easily into the bar. It’s small, a welcome warmth against the bite of cold breeze outside now that the sun’s fully set, still decorated with string lights from Christmas even though the holiday season is fully passed.

Emily orders a vodka tonic and asks for the bartender to double it just to see if she can get a rise out of Caitlin, but all it earns is a smirk. Caitlin orders a whiskey for herself and they settle into the bar.

“So.” Finally, Caitlin turns to her, pinning her onto the barstool with this _look_. “How are you doing? For real.”

“Horrible.” Her first full swallow of alcohol knocks the truth right out of her, but somehow it feels satisfying to just be real for a moment. “Like, not good at all.”

“Yeah.” There’s a look in her friend’s eye, like she’s weighing her odds of surviving the next few words she’s going to say, selecting each syllable carefully. “I know it’s been hard, but have you talked to Lindsey about it yet?”

“Nope.” Emily pops the ‘p’ on it and finishes her drink, which puts her at four on the night. Bad decision-making territory. “And I don’t particularly want to, okay?”

Caitlin visibly flinches from the edge in Emily’s voice, but thankfully she just shrugs and finishes off her drink as well.

“Okay, so we’re going to talk about _that_ when I get back.” Caitlin taps on the bar and signals for another round, then points at Emily. “I’m gonna pee. Settle in for a heart-to-heart.”

It sends a panic into Emily’s chest, reaching up to clutch at her lungs like an actual vice. She watches Caitlin weave her way to the undoubtedly gross bathroom, turns back to the bar and grabs at her next drink. It’s hot, all of the sudden, and Emily sucks in a breath at how quickly the flush sweeps through her. Maybe it’s the alcohol, maybe it’s the way the bar seems suddenly a little too crowded. 

Either way, it forces her to tug off her leather jacket, struggling to awkwardly hook it on the back of her barstool.

“Winter’s the worst, right?” Emily’s head snaps up at the voice, which comes from a girl who’s sitting two stools over, right next to where Caitlin was sitting before she made her proclamation. “You’re either too cold when you’re outside or you’re too warm when you’re inside.”

It’s that easy. The girl’s conversation starter is a little dumb and very obviously forced, but it belies enough blatant interest that Emily can shove down any previous inclinations toward actually being honest with Caitlin, slapping on a smile instead. By the time Caitlin returns from the bathroom, the girl has scooted over to steal her stool, knocking her hand against Emily’s thigh at any and every chance she gets.

“Hello there.” Caitlin doesn’t look amused. If anything, she looks disappointed, but again she doesn’t argue, sliding into the only other barstool available, letting the girl stay wedged between the two of them. They swap introductions and Caitlin feigns interest in this girl’s organic soap side hustle for all of three seconds before she shoots Emily a look. It’s half betrayed and half annoyed, and Emily gets it — this is one of their last nights together like this, Emily was the one who dragged her out and then dragged her here — but she’s too embroiled in this sudden wave of selfishness to give a shit.

So she doubles down on their conversation, leans in and brushes her hand across the girl’s knuckles, and Caitlin lets out a little snort of annoyance and swivels toward the bartender. Emily figures she’s just ordering another drink to make this stupid conversation a little more bearable — God only knows Emily will be doing the same as soon as she can — but then she’s leaning across the bar to close out, signing the receipt and stuffing her phone into her back pocket.

“Have fun kid.” There’s no actual hostility in the words, and Caitlin still wraps an arm around her shoulder, still presses a kiss to her cheek before she leaves. In that moment, Emily is unspeakably grateful for her friend, for this quiet little moment of understanding. Even if Caitlin is annoyed, even if she’s going to catch shit for this tomorrow, she’ll let her self-destruct for this moment because she _knows_ it’ll somehow be easier on Emily than facing her own feelings. It might not be the most textbook healthy thing to do, but it’s what she needs right now.

Emily orders another drink. She considers ordering another after that, but at this point she’s getting all the right cues, and yeah she’s only done this once before but it seems actually pretty damn easy if she just pretends she doesn’t care about herself or this girl or anyone else in Portland. Then the bartender offers another round, and she’s choking down the drink quickly because there’s a hand on her thigh that’s making it very clear that she needs to hurry things the hell up.

They don’t kiss until they’re on the street, but then the girl climbs halfway into Emily’s lap in the Lyft and it annoys her a little but at the same time she’s comforted by the neediness, by not being the one who _wants_ the most in this moment. The walk from the car to the front door is wobbly and Emily struggles to balance even more when she wonders if Lindsey could see them coming home right now, if she can hear them laughing, and she’s losing her center of gravity along that chain of thought when she sees movement in front of her door and nearly falls on her face.

“Emily.” Tobin’s voice is calm, gentle, but there’s something immovable in it. “Dude, come here.”

She’s going to kill Caitlin.

That’s all Emily can think as Tobin herds the girl — who is, admittedly, _very_ drunk — into an Uber that she had apparently called the moment they pulled up to the curb. Then her hands are on Emily’s back, pressing her with the same gentle insistence into her own apartment, and she doesn’t really fight it but she _resents_ it all the same. 

Emily doesn’t really need an explanation — she figures Caitlin called Tobin, and for some reason that warranted enough of an emergency for her to show up here — and Tobin doesn’t offer one either. She just makes a cup of tea for herself and pours a glass of water for Emily, making her drink and then refilling it, pressing the glass into her hand and Emily into the couch.

“Alright.” Tobin sits down, crosses her legs and fixes Emily with a stare that leaves her squirming. “We’re going to talk right now. And you either talk to me about this, or you talk to Christen about it, and believe me, one of those conversations is going to be much longer and much more emotionally demanding than the other.”

Emily, illogically and unexpectedly, starts to cry.

There’s no build-up, no entry into it. Maybe it’s the alcohol, or the fact that it’s now well past 1 a.m. Regardless of any excuse or reasoning, one moment Emily is sitting on the couch taking a hesitant sip of water, and the next the glass is on the coffee table and her head is buried in her hands and Tobin is doing her absolute best to hold onto her while her shoulders are racked with sobs.

(Distantly, she wonders if Lindsey can hear _that_ from next door.)

Somehow, at some point, she gets herself to stop. It’s hard, because this somehow feels like the first time she’s cried in forever, which isn’t true at all. She’s cried almost every day since the trade was announced — in bed, in the shower, in the car, in a random corner of the grocery store on her first day back in Portland. But this is the first time she’s let herself cry over Lindsey. Not over the trade, not over the move. Just over Lindsey.

When she stops, she’s almost light headed from it, feels it in her chest and her joints. Tobin’s shifted back on the couch to give her a little room to breathe, hand soft on her spine.

“Okay?” It’s a gentle question, and Emily isn’t really, not at all, but she still nods and sniffles and wipes at her nose. “Em, tell me what the fuck is going on with you.”

“I’m in love with her.” Tobin thankfully doesn’t force her to spell anything else out, just nods, her expression soft and gentle as she rubs a small circle into her shoulder blade. “It just- like it just sucks?”

Tobin makes a small humming noise in the back of her throat, but she doesn’t offer anything more. The silence hangs between them, a little heavy but mostly gentle. Eventually, she gets the message — she’s not going to force Emily to say anything, letting her take her own time.

“You saw us kissing at the World Cup.” That earns a little more reaction. Tobin scratches at the back of her neck, nods once.

“Yeah, I did.” She shrugs, rubs at her upper arm. “I was happy for you guys.”

“Yeah.” Emily picks at the cuticle of her left pointer finger with her thumbnail, her mouth twitching. “I was happy, too.”

“I could tell,” Tobin says, and she shifts slightly, curiosity glinting in her eyes. “I mean, we all saw— just the whole time in France. You looked happy.”

“I _was_.” It comes out especially mournful, almost the same way when she had broken down in Kelley’s arms in Tampa. “And then— I don’t know. We haven’t talked about it since.”

“Right, that sounds about on-brand.” Emily jerks her head up to glare at her, but Tobin looks nonplussed. “You’re both idiots.”

“I’m not— it’s not my fault,” Emily bites out. It’s sudden, but Tobin somehow stirred up that wave of anger, and now it’s bubbling in her stomach again and the words are tumbling out whether she likes it or not. “She’s been completely unfair. We kissed and then we came home and we didn’t talk about it and now she acts like I’m morally affronting her every time I, like, look at another girl which is stupid because it’s not like she’s—“

“Dude.” Tobin’s hand on her arm cuts her off. “You’re an idiot.”

“Oh really?” Emily surges off the couch, grabbing her now-empty glass of water and stalking to the kitchen. “Well thanks for coming over and sending my hookup home and cornering me in my own place at 1 a.m. just to tell me I’m an idiot.”

“You’re an idiot because Lindsey’s been crazy about you for four years,” Tobin calls matter-of-factly from the other room, and the glass drops the final inch out of Emily’s hand into the sink. She freezes still in the kitchen, her hands gripped on the counter top framing the sink, until she hears Tobin pad into the room quietly behind her. “I’m pretty sure if you asked her she’d tell you that herself.”

Emily turns slowly, lets herself lean against the counter.

“But we didn’t talk—“ she cuts herself off, and Tobin watches her, a soft form of amusement filling her features. 

“Neither of you talked about it, right?” Tobin crosses her arms, looking at Emily expectantly. “Because you’ve both been in love with each other for, like, forever, so you were both terrified to do anything. Because you’re both idiots.”

She wants to respond with some sort of witty comeback, but Emily is too focused on breathing to really do anything else, so she concentrates on the tile under her feet. Thankfully, Tobin is patient, leaning against the doorframe and watching Emily carefully. She waits until it calms down, returning to a normal rhythm of in-and-out, before she dares to glance up.

“So Lindsey is—“

“In love with you, yes.” Tobin smiles crookedly. “Why do you think she almost broke Kelley’s ankle last week in camp?”

“Because she’s the Great Horan and she doesn’t know her own strength,” Emily mumbles, but she’s now fighting the battle of keeping her mouth from curling up into a smile.

“You guys are gross,” Tobin laughs, rolling her eyes. “And also, someone has to tell you that hickey was gross, so I’ll be the one to do it.”

Emily launches herself across the room and into Tobin’s torso, wrapping her arms around her rib cage.

“How did you turn into such a sage old lady?” She mumbles into her collar, and she feels Tobin’s laugh as much as she hears it.

“You should’ve seen me and Chris go through this whole ordeal,” she says, tugging at Emily’s sleeve fondly. “We were idiots, too.”

For a moment, Emily had felt overwhelmed by the hope blooming in her chest. But now— now it crashes back down, because she’s remembering everything, remembering the days and weeks now that she’s been dancing away from Lindsey, remembering the look on her face when she led that girl out of the bar, remembering the way she tried not to look at the mark on her throat in camp. Remembering how much she’s fucked this up.

“So how—“ Emily trails off, because she’s not even sure where to begin. How does she tell her best friend she’s been in love with her for years? How does she apologize for months of irrational pining? How does she ask her to be— to be what? Her girlfriend?

“Dude.” Tobin shrugs and smiles like it’s the easiest thing in the world. “Just stop being an idiot.”


	3. turn out the light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this entire chapter exists in a world that doesn't have coronavirus because I didn't feel like restructuring the plot around it.

i. (the time she got it right)

She could’ve texted Lindsey.

Emily knows that, and as she raises her hand to knock on the door she wonders for the thousandth time if she should just flee back to her apartment and shoot off a message instead. But this was one of the few pieces of advice that Tobin had given her — “In person is always better, even if it’s harder” — and every other thing she’d said had been so deeply helpful that Emily just has to trust this one as well.

She planned on getting over here a lot earlier, but Tobin hadn’t left until a little after 2 a.m., and when Emily had immediately silenced her alarm when it went off to start her normal offseason schedule at 7:30 a.m. It took even longer to get showered and dressed and made up the _exact_ right amount to look casual but still look decent. Then, of course, there was the nervous pacing around the apartment, the panicked phone call to Tobin, and a little more pacing.

So now it’s half past noon and Emily has been standing on Lindsey’s porch for three minutes trying to get up the nerve to knock.

She does it. Finally. There’s no answer, so Emily knocks again, harder, and that earns an annoyed yell from inside.

The door swings open and it’s like Emily hasn’t seen Lindsey’s face in years. It quite literally almost takes her breath away, which is _so_ unbelievably stupid that it consequently makes her laugh.

So here she is. Standing on the porch of her best friend, who she’s in love with, fighting back a laugh with a huge sloppy grin on her face. And not saying anything.

“Uh- hey.” Lindsey, for her part, looks conflicted — her eyes flickered with excitement when she first opened the door and saw Emily standing there, but now her expression has fallen a bit, looking slightly annoyed and also a bit concerned. “What’s wrong?”

The soft way that Lindsey asks it hits Emily somewhere tender in her chest. This used to be normal, popping over to say hey or propose a movie night or drag each other on a run. Now Lindsey looks like she’s steeling for bad news.

“Nothing’s wrong, weirdo.” She meant it to come out funny, but Lindsey’s whole frame just curls up at that, their normal jokes seeming to turn her stiff, sad. “I’m just- I’m fixing breakfast.”

“Oh?” Lindsey’s mouth quirks up slightly, but it’s gone so quickly that Emily wonders if she just imagined it. “Um, it’s the afternoon.”

“Right, yeah, okay- brunch.” Emily’s actually trembling, rubbing her fingers anxiously at the hem of her shirt. “Do you want to come over?”

She could’ve asked Lindsey if she wanted to switch her citizenship to England and earned a less incredulous stare. Lindsey seems to panic, at least a little, but she also isn’t saying _no_ , and that causes another one of those dopey grins to claw its way across Emily’s face.

“Oh, um- yeah, I just- I need to-“ Lindsey jerks her thumb back into her apartment. “I need to like- brush my teeth? And stuff?”

Emily nods, even though Lindsey still has a toothbrush at her place for the times she was too tired to walk the 30 feet back to her own place.

“Take your time.” She backs off the porch. “I’ll leave the door unlocked.”

She’s out of eggs. And avocados.

Emily realizes that about five seconds into pulling everything she needs for breakfast out of the fridge. She tries not to panic, although she can imagine what Tobin would probably say if she were here, and it’s that teasing voice that stays in her ear as she settles for milk, cereal and yogurt.

It’s stuck rather solidly in her ribs, this feeling about Tobin coming over last night. The thing is that Tobin — for all her kindness and support — is really Lindsey’s friend. They’ve been through more together, known each other longer than even Emily and Lindsey have known each other. If she was going to take a side of any sort in this whole mess, it would be Lindsey’s side, which is why Emily had been confused at first about why Tobin had showed up at her place unannounced at a moment’s notice.

Emily had actually _said_ that to Tobin on the phone this morning, and it earned an incredulous laugh from the other line.

“Dude, why do you think I’m doing this?” It sounded like a joke at first, but Tobin was earnest. “This is what’s best for Lindsey, too.”

That comment alone had bolstered Emily enough to get dressed, get next door and get the hell out of her comfort zone. It was not, however, enough to keep her from panicking completely about the lack of actual breakfast provisions in her kitchen.

“Sonnett?”

Lindsey never used to announce herself before she came into Emily’s house, but then again nothing is really the same as it used to be, so it makes sense that she calls tentatively down the hall before shuffling into the kitchen. Emily, for her part, is still scrambling around the kitchen, trying her best to make off-brand greek yogurt and three types of cereal into something that looks nice enough to invite someone over to share.

“Hey.” She glances up and she can practically feel how tense Lindsey is, even as she attempts to lean casually against the counter. “Almost ready here.”

It’s a little painful. Lindsey doesn’t even make fun of the fact that Emily is basically just serving her a fancy version of a continental breakfast. Instead, she steps wordlessly into fixing their coffee, skirting a little farther around Emily than usual as she grabs the creamer and the sweetener without needing to ask where either is located. 

When they finally sit down, Emily is kind of proud — she sliced strawberries and a banana and arranged them with the yogurt and cereal to look decent, like something a vegan cafe would charge $12 for — but Linsey just grabs her spoon and immediately digs in.

“Late night?” Lindsey asks it through a full mouth, and Emily realizes that she’s watching her carefully despite pretending to be focused on her bowl. “I saw Caitlin’s story.”

There’s just the tiniest tinge of hurt in that, and Emily bites back her automatic instinct to wince at it. She does feel bad — for leaving Lindsey out, for pushing her away — but she doesn’t want to sink too much into it. 

“Yeah, it was good to just get some one-on-one time with her before I leave.” She can see Lindsey soften at that immediately, and it makes her want to wrap herself around Lindsey, the way she always wants what’s best for Emily. “We went to that bougie wine place she’s been wanting to try.”

“Gross.” Lindsey crinkles her nose. “How was it?”

“Bougie.” Emily shrugs, tries to get even a small smile out of Lindsey. “I spent 20 bucks on a glass of pinot.”

“Jeez.”

They’ve both finished eating already — Emily wolfing it down out of hunger, Lindsey eating fervently to avoid looking at Emily — and Emily stands, gesturing for her to hand over her bowl.

They’re quiet for a moment, Emily rinsing the bowls, Lindsey settling against the counter again to sip at her coffee. She can feel Lindsey watching her, and she steels herself quietly before turning around, wiping both hands on a dishcloth.

“Do you ever think about the kiss?”

She feels, rather than sees, Lindsey’s reaction. It’s almost a ripple effect, the way she flushes and flinches all at once, sucking down a too-big swallow of coffee and then setting her mug down with an exaggerated _thud_. Emily stares at Lindsey and Lindsey looks anywhere but at her and she _knows_.

It’s overwhelming. For months — years �— Emily has wanted to know the answer to this question, this big uncertainty looming between them. And now she does, just from the way Lindsey is visibly panicking, the way she finally meets Emily’s eyes, earnest and _wanting_. She knows and it’s so big she can barely hold onto it, barely keep her feet on the ground.

“Em, I—“

“Lindsey.” She cuts her off because she know that right now, Lindsey’s only instinct is to say the easiest thing to avoid all this. “Do you think about it?”

She doesn’t get an answer. Lindsey stays where she is, looking at the floor now.

“I do,” Emily says, and Lindsey’s head snaps up. “I think about it pretty much every day.”

“Emily.” Lindsey’s voice is pleading, raspy with disuse. It hits Emily somewhere a little lower than her stomach, and she relishes the fact that for once she doesn’t feel guilty for admitting to herself that it’s attractive, that _Lindsey_ is attractive. “What are you saying?”

She’s tired of talking, so she walks over to where Lindsey stands. She’s still looking down, but for once the height difference is to Emily’s advantage. She reaches up, crooks a finger under Lindsey’s chin and tugs the inch or two necessary to force Lindsey to meet her eyes.

“I don’t get what’s going on in your head lately,” she says softly, leaning up into Lindsey’s space a little more, craving the warmth that she normally emanates from her long frame.

It doesn’t have the desired effect. Lindsey snaps her head away, and she doesn’t put her hands on Emily, but the way she quickly steps out of the embrace feels like a slap to the face. Emily takes a second before turning around, watching Lindsey with her back up against the kitchen island, gripping the countertop with both hands and gasping for air.

“What are you doing?” Lindsey’s voice is high, almost manic. “You don’t know what’s— Emily, it’s felt like I’m best friends with a stranger since- since we—“

“Since we kissed?” Emily offers, and Lindsey huffs out an annoyed breath.

“Since you rejected me.” Lindsey bites out every word, and now it’s Emily’s turn to be silent. “Like, I get it, okay? I know it was just all the excitement of France, I know we were in a bubble and we were just excited about winning and I know, I _know_ , that you could do much better than me, God do I know that because you’ve been making that abundantly clear since we got back, and you’ve made sure that I know that you’d rather have a random hookup at a bar, or an actual fucking starter on the national team, so I _get_ it, okay? I just—“

Lindsey is gasping for breath at this point, yelling in a way that’s pointed and furious and completely off base from her usual demeanor.

“I figured I could just get over you,” Lindsey mutters. “I didn’t expect you to make it so fucking awful for me.”

“Linds.” There’s a single tear running a track down Lindsey’s cheek, and when Emily speaks she realizes that she’s fighting back tears of her own, her voice croaking slightly in her throat. “Lindsey, I didn’t reject you.”

There’s a silence, so absolute that Emily can hear the hum of her furnace.

“What?” Lindsey whispers it, soft and fragile. “But we didn’t—“

“We didn’t talk about it.” Emily is trying her best not to cry and to smile all at once. “I didn’t talk to you, and you didn’t talk to me, and we both just assumed the worst.”

“So you—“ Lindsey looks up at her, curiosity and fear carving plaintive lines across her face, and Emily takes a quick, hard breath in.

Five seconds of bravery. That’s the last piece of advice Tobin had given her. All it takes is five seconds of brave talking, and then you can go back to be a stupid coward.

“I’ve thought about kissing you every time I’ve looked at you since France,” Emily says, and it feels like the first drop of a rollercoaster, like dropping an armload of groceries after climbing five flights of stairs. “Probably since before that. I know you don't believe this, but you've always been what I've wanted even though you've always been too good for me.”

“Emily.” Lindsey’s voice comes out in a rush, and she sags back against the counter for a moment, her eyes bugging out. “Oh my god, we’re—“

“Idiots.” Emily says it, and she can hear Tobin laughing somewhere. “Absolute fucking idiots.”

Lindsey is looking at her and Emily is looking back and they’re both doing their absolute best to keep from laughing. It doesn’t work, and after a moment they’re both cracking up, Lindsey’s face scrunching up in that way Emily loves. They finally pull it together, Emily straightening up after spending several seconds doubled over.

“You think about it?” The hunger is back in Lindsey’s eyes, fierce and a little wild, but she’s staying put and Emily wants to change that.

“All the time.” She lets the corner of her mouth crook upwards, watches the way Lindsey’s eyes flicker down, then back up. “Pretty much every night, honestly.”

Lindsey nods, as if she’s in a film session and an assistant coach just pointed out that the opposing team uses a double pivot in transition. It’s matter-of-fact, so much so that Emily doesn’t really have any time to react when she suddenly pushes herself off the counter where she had been leaning, takes the three steps necessary to close the gap between them and get her hands all tangled up in Emily’s hair.

There are a lot of details that Emily fixates on later, when she has the time to — the way Lindsey’s hips shove her back into the counter a little too hard, the way her hands immediately frame her face before slipping into her hair, the way she tugs to get Emily’s face tilted up at just the right angle. But in the moment, Emily is so overwhelmed with Lindsey’s lips on hers that all she can do is grab at her sweatshirt and hold on for dear life.

“Okay?” Lindsey pulls back just half an inch to ask the question, and Emily’s breaths fall heavy as she does, watching the way that Lindsey’s eyes are flicking over her face. She nods and Lindsey leans right back in, hands slipping down her back and then up her shirt.

Lindsey’s hands do too much in too little time. She moves them up to Emily’s waist, digs them into her ribcage, slips them back to play a staccato rhythm down her spine. Emily is still trying to find her balance when Lindsey pulls back, catches hold of the hem of Emily’s shirt and fixes her with a _look_.

“Can you?”

She pulls it off before she has time to think, and then Lindsey’s pressed back up on her the same, teeth digging into the curve of her throat. Emily gives up on keeping up with Lindsey, should’ve known it was impossible to begin with, and just grabs at her shoulders, arching up into the sensation. Lindsey’s tongue drops a little lower and Emily lets loose a soft noise, something a little lighter than a moan, and then Lindsey seems to be possessed with a competitive need to get her to make that noise again, and again.

It’s moving too fast and Emily knows it. She puts a hand on Lindsey’s cheek and she’s ready to tell her it’s okay, that she doesn’t have anything to prove, that she can take her time, and then—

And then Lindsey drops to her knees.

It’s— well it’s just too goddamn much. Lindsey presses her palm flat against Emily’s stomach, runs her other hand up her thigh, and Emily just looks down at her in shock, her mouth making a small ‘o’ because she can’t really think of anything to do or say in reaction.

It’s everything she’s wanted and refused to let herself want all at once, and it’s too goddamn much.

“Em.” Lindsey’s voice is raspy like before and Emily wants to drag her up by the strings of her hoodie and kiss her until she can’t breathe, but she’s too frozen by the way Lindsey is looking up at her, by the sight of Lindsey on her knees like this. “You good?”

“Mhm.” It’s the most Emily can manage, and she squeezes her eyes shut when Lindsey trails the hand on her thigh a little further in, fingers brushing at the edge of her shorts. “Linds, you don’t have to—“

“I want to.” Her hand moves higher and Emily almost blacks out. “Please, just let me—“

The rest is a blur. It’s not really how Emily pictured her ideal first time — Lindsey tugs her shorts off and after several minutes Emily actually almost collapses from trying to hold herself up, and then the counter is cold when Lindsey hikes her up onto it, and Emily realizes as she comes down from it that Lindsey is still fully clothed while she’s only wearing a sports bra, clinging to her best friend’s shoulders with her face buried in her neck.

“This needs to come off.” She pulls back as she says it, tugging at Lindsey’s hoodie, and she’s glad she does because she’s able to catch the way Lindsey flushes.

They spend the day in bed. It’s not something Emily has ever really done before, but she suddenly feels ravenous. Any attempt to quell her need to touch Lindsey — not even to fuck her, just to run her hands across her skin, to press kisses across her neck and pull their bodies flush together — just fails. 

At one point, she mentions that they should eat. It seems logical, especially since they’re both athletes who require constant feeding and hydration just to perform the basic duties of their job. Lindsey shrugs, hums a little in her throat as she presses a kiss to Emily’s clavicle.

“I’m making up for lost time,” she says softly into Emily’s hair, and it tugs a chuckle out of her chest.

“Idiots,” Emily mutters, and then Lindsey swallows it in a kiss, and another, and another.

***

Packing sucks. Not just because of the emotions of literally putting her things in a box and leaving Portland. It’s just that packing and moving — from anywhere, to anywhere — is possibly the worst process in the world.

“Should I even keep all these jackets?” Emily tentatively pats the top of a pile of crisply folded windbreakers. There’s 15 of them, which is almost appalling when she considers the height of her sweatshirt pile and her heavy coat pile and her non-windbreaker light jacket pile. “Does it even get cold in Orlando?”

“Alanna says it gets pretty chilly in the spring and the fall.” Caitlin is crouched over her socks, for some reason fixated on getting each one paired and folded properly together. “And don’t forget you’ll be traveling for games.”

“Smart.” Emily shifts them toward the “Orlando” section of the room, shoving them the final distance with her foot.

“Guys—“ Ellie re-enters the room with her typical accompaniment of noise and two hands full of brown bags. “We definitely over ordered.”

“You can’t over order Thai food.” Lindsey enters the room, carrying twice as many to-go boxes and bags in her arms. “That’s a guaranteed fact.”

It knocks the air out of Emily a little bit now, every time that she gets to look at Lindsey for the first time — that day, that hour, that minute — and doesn’t have to worry about being caught looking. Her hair is up and she looks a little out of breath and when she turns to Emily she’s grinning before their eyes even meet.

“Pad see ew?” Emily asks eagerly, scrambling to her feet to take half of the boxes out of Lindsey’s arms. She hadn’t even told her what to order, figuring she could trust Lindsey’s judgement.

“Of course.” Lindsey hip checks her lightly as she deposits the remaining boxes onto the counter, then reaches out a hand to squeeze her side affectionately. “And double spring rolls. Plus that soup you like.”

“God I love you.” It kind of spills out of Emily, completely unintentional. It feels all too natural, and honestly, how many times has Emily said that before? She’s told Lindsey she loved her for scoring a goal in stoppage time, for bringing her an ice-cold water bottle after training, for saving her from a prank with Rose. She’s told her so many times before that she loves her — on buses, on planes, in locker rooms, in Denver and Atlanta, in Portland and Lyon. She’s told her she loves her so many times that she doesn’t even think when she says it now, as they pack up her apartment with their two best friends both within earshot.

Ellie makes a sort of choking noise, and Caitlin swivels on her heel and walks directly out of the room.

They had already been forced to tell both of them, mainly because Emily insisted on spending every possible second of her final days in Portland with their friends and also with Lindsey, and there was quite honestly no way they were going to be able to keep their hands off one another. (On a selfish note, Emily really, really wanted Caitlin to know she’d stopped being an idiot.)

It had gone… well, it went about as well as Emily had expected. Ellie told them she wanted to see proof or she wouldn’t buy it, and Emily had gotten only three words into parroting back something she’d heard Megan say before about performative sexuality, and then Lindsey had dragged her into a kiss that was neither short or chaste. That worked, because Ellie immediately left the room, claiming she needed to vomit somewhere.

Caitlin had just fixed them with a maniacal grin, eyes flitting back and forth.

“Did she tell you that this is all because of me?” she asked, and Emily felt a jolt of panic, terrified that Caitlin would tell Lindsey about the night before all this happened. “Tell her, Em. Tell her what a good friend I am.”

“You called in Tobin to do all your heavy lifting,” Emily said, struggling to keep her tone light while doing her best to fix Caitlin with a warning stare. “I hardly think that qualifies you for any Friend of the Year awards.”

To her credit, Caitlin left it at that, hopping across the room to tug them both into a hug and kiss the tops of their heads.

Emily had found an odd sense of stability in the dynamic that quickly formed. Ellie and Caitlin ganged up on the two of them constantly, teasing them for every little thing, mimicking them anytime things got even slightly soft. This was exactly what Emily had expected, and although she didn’t think she’d entirely _hate_ it, she didn’t expect the way she absolutely loved it. It felt warm and sincere and, somehow, absolutely normal, and any time an insecurity crept in, Lindsey was there to tangle their fingers together or kiss her hair in a way that made Emily feel almost irrationally safe.

Now, however, she sort of wishes they’d never told their friends anything, if only to save herself the embarrassment of saying, “I love you” for the first time over a bag of takeout.

“We can ignore that,” Lindsey says, not even looking up at Emily as she pulls down a set of plates and begins to distribute food to each one evenly. “You know they would’ve found something to be weird about no matter what.”

Emily watches her as she says this — the slope of her shoulders, the curve of her jaw, the way her hands move — and she’s struck with something warm and a little delicate in her chest.

“Linds.” She doesn’t turn around, and that’s enough to show her hand. Emily knows as an absolute that Lindsey wants to talk about it, probably _needs_ to talk about it. “Lindsey.”

She doesn’t make her look, doesn’t force her to turn around. Instead, she slips her arms around her waist, tugging a little too tight as she presses her cheek flat to Lindsey’s back.

“I meant it.”

Emily can feel the way Lindsey breathes out, her shoulders slumping a little as she reacts.

“I know.” Emily presses a kiss to her spine, pulls back to let her finish fixing dinner, takes a year’s worth of joy from the half-inch curl of Lindsey’s smile. “I know.”

***

They had decided not to tell the rest of the national team just yet.

Obviously they had to tell Tobin, which means Christen knows now as well. But the rest of it — well, it just kind of seemed like a lot.

“How would that even go?” Lindsey asks as they wheel their suitcases through PDX. “Like, what- we sit them all down in a conference room and give an extended presentation on our relationship status?”

“We could put together a PowerPoint,” Emily offers, already half-choking on her own joke. “Just, like, to get them up to speed on all the big moments.”

“I mean, it’s not the _worst_ idea,” Tobin mutters, because telling everyone as a group had been her idea and she had clearly been at least a little bit proud of it.

“Tobin-“ Lindsey slings an arm around her shoulders. “All due respect, but the team only found out you and Chris were together because Alyssa walked into the bathroom that one—“

“Okay, okay, okay-“ Tobin shrugs away with an annoyed huff, doing her best to speed away from them, but it just gives Emily an opening to wedge her foot under her suitcase and send Tobin half-tripping forward, almost falling on her face.

They laugh, and then they stop for coffee and promptly forget to finish the conversation.

It’s not a problem until they reach the hotel. 

The thing that Emily has come to realize is that _everything_ is just a little bit better now. It’s all the little things, like now on the flight — instead of finding an excuse to fall asleep on Lindsey’s shoulder on the plane she can just _ask_ , leaning into her shoulder and taking the earbud that Lindsey automatically offered, drifting off halfway through whatever movie she’d pre-selected for their flight.

It makes it easy to just stop worrying, to not obsess over details like she used to do.

But when they get to the hotel, Emily decides they _definitely_ should’ve talked this one over.

It starts when Rose jumps both of them, hauling them into her typical weird embrace that’s halfway between a hug and being throttled to death. The rest of them follow suit, and Mal pokes her cheek.

“You seem good.” Leave it to Mal to be blunt, like always. “Like, really good dude.”

“Don’t be weird.” Emily nips at Mal’s finger when she tries to poke her face again, and that’s enough to ward it off for a few minutes. That lasts, of course, until Christen arrives in the lobby and feels the need to walk straight towards them, tapping Tobin fondly on the hip before dragging Emily into the world’s deepest hug.

“Hey.” Emily mutters, and she’s fighting extremely hard but the smile spreading across her face is slowly winning the battle. “You’re getting soft in your old age.”

“Shut up.” Christen pulls away and jams a finger into Emily’s ribs, forcing her to double over and squeal lightly, and then she finally turns her attention to Tobin. Emily knows it’s weird — Tobin and Christen haven’t seen each other in about 10 days, which is practically a year for them — and she can _feel_ the weirdness when she turns back to Rose and Mal. They’re staring, and Lindsey is pointedly _not_ staring, and Emily realizes they’re probably in over their heads.

The next thing she realizes is that she can’t lie to Kelley.

Emily feels relieved that she’s rooming with Abby, who isn’t getting in until the next afternoon, because she’s hoping that it’ll give her the opportunity to grab Lindsey and reassess this whole not-telling-all-their-best-friends situation. She pulls her phone out the second she gets into the room, flopping onto her back on the closest bed before remembering that Abby doesn’t like sleeping close to the window. She’s up on her feet again when someone — and it has to be Lindsey, right? — knocks on the door, and Emily is surprised by the wave of relief that rushes through her.

It’s not Lindsey.

Instead, Emily opens the door — and she knows, she _knows_ that she’s grinning rather dumbly — and Kelley is there instead, leaned goofily against the doorframe.

“Excited to see me, kid?” There’s a glint in Kelley’s eye, and it’s enough for Emily to pull her into the room immediately to avoid any havoc she could wreak publicly in the hall.

“What’s up, Kell?” She tries to play dumb, but Kelley is just standing there, her hands on her hips and her smile just a little bit too gentle to really start bickering.

“Em—“ Kelley tips her head slightly to one side, and Emily lets out a breath she didn’t even know she was holding. “I got all your Snapchats and I saw all the Instagram stories. What’s going on?” 

“We talked and we’re good now.” For a moment, Emily sees the look in Kelley’s eyes and _knows_ she could just leave it at that, but she remembers the way Kelley held her after the trade, warm and protective, and she chooses to trust. “Also, we kiss a lot now.”

The following cacophony of noise is hard to keep up with — Kelley is practically screaming as she jumps on top of her, knocking her back into the hotel wall as she hugs her a little too tightly, Emily trying to push her off, citing concerns of reinjuring both of them.

Lindsey doesn’t even give Emily time to worry if she made the right call telling Kelley — “Oh, thank _God_ , honestly,” she breathes out when Emily tells her later that day — and it helps things feel even more normal when Kelley spends half an hour that night interrogating both of them.

It especially helps seven days later, when Emily is finally facing the one day she didn’t want to deal with — her first visit to the stadium.

She doesn’t mind playing for the Pride. Seriously, she doesn’t. It’s the _leaving_ that hurts, not the newness of everything else. But a media day like this — with the Jumbotron lit up with her name, with a team of photographers tagging along behind her, with an introductory interview and awkward social media hits, with absolutely no outlet to turn the attention away from herself for even a second — well, this is just about Emily’s worst nightmare.

She doesn’t like attention. Emily knows it doesn’t seem like that, because she likes to dance and she’s at least decently funny and she puts a lot of dumb shit on social media. But in actuality, Emily uses most of that to deflect, always doing her best to turn attention slightly adjacent from herself.

Which is what led them _here_ — Emily sprawled out on her back in bed, gently begging Kelley and Lindsey to get her to leave.

“Please talk me through this,” Emily says, her eyes squeezed shut, one arm thrown over her face. “Please.”

“Well first off—“ she feels Lindsey lower herself onto the bed next to her. “You look _great_ in purple.”

That earns a derisive snort from Kelley’s direction across the room, but Emily smiles a little.

“Seriously Em, it’s a great color.” She groans a little, rolling over so her front presses up against Lindsey’s hip. “And it’s a great backline.”

Emily nods, hoping it’ll be enough to keep her talking, eyes still closed.

“You won’t have to guard Marta again,” Kelley adds, and that one earns a laugh from Lindsey. “Or Alex. Or Sydney, God help the rest of us.”

It helps a little. The warm feeling she gets from their words lasts for about 20 minutes, about the time it takes for her to take the Uber drive on her own to the stadium.

Emily had hoped that Ali or Ashlyn would offer to come along with her to this, but they were off with Cassius and Sydney, and she was still a little too timid around them to ask for the escort. When she pulls up, it’s a little less awkward than she expected. Everyone is nice, but after a few minutes the discomfort is back because everyone is a little _too_ nice, as if they know she might be unhappy, as if they’re scared of upsetting her already.

It’s a relief when Marc finally drags her out of the stadium, driving them downtown to a coffeeshop and pulling out a notebook full of concepts for the season. Diving into soccer feels easy and natural, and she leans into it, tries to use tactics to drown out any other thought in her head.

The sun’s already beginning to sink when he drops her off at the hotel, the air heavy with humidity in the late-afternoon light. Emily stands there for a second, fingers clenching the bag of gear — shirts, sweats, that goddamn jersey — as she lets herself finally breathe.

“Hi.” She turns and Lindsey is standing in the doorway to the hotel, teeth gnawing lightly at her lower lip. “Um- not to be weird but I was just, uh- just waiting for you to get back.”

Emily drops the bag of gear, and she doesn’t exactly run to Lindsey but she’s not slow about wrapping her arms around her neck and pressing her face into her throat.

“That bad?” Lindsey asks, and her voice is so soft that Emily automatically squeezes a little tighter. 

Eventually, she tugs herself away because she needs to find a way to explain that it _wasn’t_ that bad, that her current state of fragility is less about where she’s going and more about what she’s leaving.

“Just not the same.” Lindsey runs a hand across her cheek, and Emily idly remembers they’re still technically in public. “‘m better now.” 

Lindsey won’t stop looking at her with concern. It continues — in the elevator up to Emily’s room, as she lays out all the new gear on her bed for Lindsey to see — until Emily finally gets fed up.

“Hey.” She says it once and Lindsey is still gnawing at her lip, forehead scrunched up. “Linds.”

She stands in front of where she’s sitting on the bed, dropping a hand to Lindsey’s shoulder and trailing it up her jaw, enjoying the way that makes her shiver just a little too much. Emily uses one finger to tip Lindsey’s chin up.

“You good?” Lindsey nods in response, and Emily can tell it’s a lie, so she lets out an overdramatic sigh and plants one knee on the side of Lindsey’s hip, dropping lightly into her lap and looping her arms around her neck. “I can fix that.”

“This isn’t about me,” Lindsey mutters, but Emily just drops her lips to the skin just behind her ear, dragging her tongue lightly down her neck until she earns a gasp. “But I mean, I wouldn’t complain-“

Emily grins, has her hands under Lindsey’s shirt before she can get another word out.

It feels good to be good at this. 

Lindsey had been the first to say it. It was in their first week together, and she was pressing kisses in a trail along Emily’s hip bone and she was squirming underneath her, doing her best to walk the line between needy and demanding.

“God, I love that I can—“ Lindsey’s voice had caught in her throat, cracking slightly, and she had pulled back to rest her chin on Emily’s hip, looking up at her. “I love doing this.”

Emily had smiled, feeling something looming and dangerous in her chest as she reached down and ran her fingertips through Lindsey’s hair.

It’s the same feeling Emily had now, as she got Lindsey out of her shirt and ran her mouth along her collarbone. She didn’t even have to ask what she wanted, just followed the pattern of gasps and the way Lindsey twitched and arched under her, and she was so intoxicated by the way Lindsey was practically shivering under her, too caught up—

—so caught up that she didn’t hear the key in the door, or the hinges squeaking just slightly as it opened, or the slight “oh” that accompanied Abby walking in to see her teammates making out.

“Well, fucking finally.” 

Abby is already laughing when Emily pushes back off Lindsey, and Lindsey is so stricken that her grip loosens and Emily ends up on her ass on the floor. All three of them are gasping for breath — Emily because the wind’s been knocked out of her, Lindsey still flushing heavily from the position they’d been in second before, Abby with her hands actually on her knees to hold herself up from laughter.

“Abby, you can’t—“

“Dude, please don’t—“

“Guys.” Abby’s face softens, and she’s smiling with so much warmth that it actually makes Emily’s stomach hurt a little. “I’m not gonna tell but, like— you realize how happy this is going to make everyone, right?”

They decide to stop hiding it after that.

They still do three rounds of rock, paper, scissors to decide who gets to tell their closest friends.

Emily loses, and summarily decides to break the news during regen the following day, because Rose, Mal and Sam are all trapped in their compression legs and therefore will be at least somewhat limited in their reactions.

She hopes. 

“So—“ Emily tries to start out strong, but the word cracks as she forces it out, leaning back against Mal’s bed. Lindsey offers an encouraging smile from across the room, which is so strangely sincere that Emily can only grimace back. 

Kelley’s head snaps up, and a grin spreads across her face, eyes widening gleefully when she sees Emily shifting uncomfortably. She points at Emily, eyebrows arching comically high as she tries to send a message in some sort of sign language that she’s making up on the spot. Emily rolls her eyes and does her best to ignore her.

“So?” Mal is still looking at her phone and Rose has both eyes closed, but Sam at least seems halfway interested in Emily’s sudden desire to break the comfortable silence that had filled the room for the last ten minutes. “What’s up, Son?”

Emily takes in a deep breath and focuses on Tobin’s whole five-seconds-of-bravery mantra.

“Lindsey kissed me.”

That wasn’t what she meant to say. Really, it wasn’t. 

Lindsey lets out a surprised noise, half-choking and half-coughing. Sam sits straight up in bed, mirrored by Mal on the opposite bed, both of them looking dumbly between Lindsey and Emily. Rose remains stock-still for all of three seconds.

“I’m sorry— what?” It’s practically a screech, and now she’s sitting up, and all three of them are looking straight at Lindsey, who’s gone red and is refusing to meet anyone’s eyes.

Kelley, meanwhile, hasn’t stopped cackling since the words came out of Emily’s mouth, rolled up onto her side on the carpet.

“She- uh, well- I just meant she kissed me the first time—“ the words tumble out of Emily’s mouth, and now Rose has swiveled her attention back to Emily.

“The _first_ time?” Rose looks absolutely manic.

“Yeah, I mean we’ve been doing it a lot— not like—“ Emily just stops, because at this point it’s pretty hard to hear herself over Kelley’s laughter.

“We’re dating.” Lindsey has her face planted in her hands when she mutters it, but Emily can hear the smile curling at the edges of the second word. “Have been for awhile, Emily was supposed to just be normal and tell you like a normal person, but here we are.”

For the first time in her life, Rose Lavelle appears to be struck silent.

Sam, meanwhile, busts out the world’s widest grin.

“You _guys_.” She can’t really reach Emily, still immobilized by the legs, but she reaches out and gives her a soft pat on the head, and Emily grins up at her. “This is, like—“

“This is the best thing that’s ever happened.” Mal says it emphatically, and it’s again so surprisingly sincere that it knocks Emily a little off balance. “For real, this is— I’m going to hug the shit out of you when I get out of these stupid things.”

Emily glances nervously back at Rose, who’s still silent and has one hand over her mouth and—

“Rose, are you _crying_?”

She goes from pale to bright red in a moment, covering her face with both hands.

“I’m just so goddamn happy—“ she wails, and then Emily is laughing hard enough to rival Kelley.

She catches Lindsey’s eye across the room, and it’s— it’s almost too much. They’re not even touching, not even close, but Emily can feel the warmth from her, can feel it in that easy smile and the way she looks away for a second and then meets Emily’s eyes again. She looks _proud_ , and Emily wonders haphazardly if anyone has ever looked that proud just to be in her life before.

***

It’s May and Portland is just beginning to hit its full-on spring bloom when Emily comes back for the first time.

She cleared it with the operations staff to fly out separately, leaving the first moment she can, driving straight from training to the airport, her knee bouncing the entire time. She can’t get through security fast enough, can’t _believe_ how long it takes her bag to get unloaded and into baggage claim, and she’s just about to have a nervous breakdown as she watches for the USA tag when she hears a voice behind her.

“Sonnett, Emily?”

She swivels and Lindsey is waiting with the widest, softest smile. Emily closes the distance, launches herself into her arms and shoves her face into the curve of her neck before she does anything stupid in public.

“I missed you.” She whispers it into Lindsey’s hair and she can feel the way it vibrates through her body. “Way too much.”

Then Lindsey pulls back and does what she seems to be able to do best: knocking Emily completely off-balance.

She kisses her.

The baggage claim isn’t crowded but it’s not necessarily empty either, and there’s probably someone watching, and there’s probably a soccer fan or a Thorns fan somewhere — in the building, at the least — who might see this. And Lindsey seems completely unbothered by any ‘what if’s, cradling Emily’s face and pressing a gentle kiss to her lips like it’s the easiest thing in the world.

“Welcome home.” The words are soft and warm and Emily thinks if any one moment could swallow her whole it would be this one, she would pick this one right here to sink into forever.

The game is good.

Like, _really_ good.

Emily doesn’t feel entirely settled in Orlando yet, and she’s aware that she might never get there. Some places are home, and some are just a temporary stop, and she’s okay with that.

But she feels completely at home on this backline. Marc shifted Ali into center back, and with the veteran on her left and Ashlyn in goal behind her, Emily can actually feel herself getting better. It’s visible, tactical improvement, the type she feels she hasn’t really made in awhile. They move as a cohesive unit, and after a year of a defense that let goals in like a sieve, there’s been visible joy from everyone — even the attackers — after three straight shutouts.

“Right side, strong side, baby,” Ali says one day after training, sticking a fist out for Emily, and she grins back and something about it feels _right_. It might not be home, but it’s what she needs, and Emily remembers to take a moment of grace almost every day for the fact that this change — however hard — is somehow for the best.

And then they take their game to Portland and it’s _good_ , a nasty 1-1 draw with 27 combined shots and standout performances from both keepers, the type that causes every field player to drop to the grass in exhaustion the moment the final whistle blows.

Emily tries to savor everything — the warm cheer from the Riveters when she steps onto the pitch the first time, the leaping hugs from Caitlin and Ellie, the way Tobin cradles her head with a smile ahead of the game — but somehow Lindsey shines brighter than all of it.

Emily had taken a tackle off her in the 65th minute, cleanly getting to ground and swiping the ball out from under her legs, and Lindsey had tugged her up to her feet with a cheerful smile.

“You’re asking for it,” she smirked, tugging at Emily’s jersey.

“Don’t dish it if you can’t take it, baby.” Emily winked at her, because it all felt cheesy, felt impossible that she could possibly get the game _and_ the girl.

After a long shower and an exceptionally long post-game talk, Emily traces the familiar path out to the parking lot. Lindsey is there, in a powder blue hoodie, hair wet and expression soft and a little sleepy as she leans against her car.

“Hi.” She’d been planning a few different jokes, but all of Emily’s humor fades away, replaced by an overwhelming warmth as she looks at Lindsey waiting for her. She looks up and she beams back at Emily.

“Hey you.” Emily closes the final steps and Lindsey doesn’t hesitate to kiss her. “Mind if I take you home?”

***

She makes the Olympic roster.  
Not as an alternate, a tag-along. She makes the eighteen.

She gets the call and it’s torture, somehow, to talk to Vlatko for ten whole minutes before hanging up and calling Lindsey. She’s jumping around her room as she waits for her to pick up, and she’s sure the video is blurry before she screeches to a halt, pressing her face way too close to the screen.

“Ask me who you’re talking to right now.”

“Uh—“ Lindsey is visibly fighting back a grin. “My very stupid girlfriend?”

“Wrong.” Emily can hear the maniacal tinge to her voice. “Ask me. Ask me, Linds.”

“Who am I talkin—“

“A fucking 2020 Olympian!” Emily cuts her off before she even has a chance and resumes leaping around the room. Lindsey’s shouts give her a good rhythm to dance around to, and she finally drops onto her belly on the bed, a little out of breath.

“Holy shit.” Lindsey is absolutely _beaming_. “Em, I’m so fucking proud of you, I’m so—“

“Tell me I’m the best.” Any other time, Lindsey would’ve told her this was bad for her ego, that she was going to be incorrigible from here on out, but Lindsey just keeps smiling, just tells her that she’s beautiful and talented and _perfect_.

“I wish I was there,” Lindsey breathes out, her frustration melting slightly into her excitement. The way her voice digs into the last few syllables sends a rush through Emily, settles heavy and hot in her stomach.

“Oh yeah?” Emily smirks at the screen, tilting her head. “Tell me what you’d do if you were.”

***

Tokyo feels different from France.

Different because Emily doesn’t have to steal glances, because she can just look at Lindsey when she’s looking particularly pretty (read: always), because she can actually _tell_ her when she looks particularly pretty. Different because they don’t sleep in the same bed anymore — no girlfriends at camp and all that — but they do seek each other out every morning, drinking their coffee side by side, Lindsey’s hand occasionally drifting down to Emily’s knee.

It’s also different because now that this is for real — and now that most of the team has seen them kiss at least once — the seal has apparently been broken and all jokes are on the table. The teasing is constant, inescapable. They’re not all that different together now, but there is a little extra softness to their interactions, and every time it slips out it’s target practice for any and every teammate.

“Good God, could you be any more whipped?” Megan asks when Emily brings Lindsey a coffee one morning, and then it’s the joke of the day, and even Becky is getting in on it during training. Emily just flips her off, because she couldn’t care less. She welcomes it, invites it, because every joke reminds her of how stable they are, how they’ve become almost the same as Ali and Ashlyn, or Tobin and Christen, in their friends' eyes. Because that kind of stability is what she’s always wanted with Lindsey.

And then they _win_ the whole damn thing.

They win and there’s confetti and medals and Kelley is on top of her, hugging her so tight, and then it’s Rose and Sam, and then she fights through several teammates to grab Krieger, who’s crying, who’s finally won her gold medal. And then Lindsey is there, tall and beaming and crushing her in a hug, and—

She doesn’t kiss her on the field. Not because she didn’t want to, or because she was afraid to, but because she wanted to keep it between them, in their bubble, not for the rest of the world. Not just yet.

They wait until the afterparty, and Lindsey is holding a bottle of champagne and singing, and Emily reaches out and grabs Lindsey’s gold medal and uses it to tug her in, closing the space between them and kissing her like it's the first time.

“You and me, baby,” Lindsey says, tapping at the gold medal on her chest.

“You and me.” Emily repeats it back and kisses her again, and again, and again.

Tokyo feels different because it feels like a beginning, like a spark, like the start of the rest of her life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a fun time writing this one!
> 
> Stay safe y'all.


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